Tuesday, October 29, 2013

This Thursday, on Halloween, we move into the darker half of the year. So, we need to have a plan…what are you going to do with all that time in the dark?

A couple years ago I started a project for myself. Around this time of year I would pick a word that would be my 'guide' for the upcoming year. I would start thinking about it this time of year as my season as a garden designer ended and I had more time to focus on my yoga practice and art projects.

I realized in retrospect I was picking words that represented where I needed to do my work, dharma for the yoga geeks. The words were usually something I was lacking and definitely afraid of in some way. They just started out in the dark from an etheric place of listening and looking and watching what my habits were and what I wanted to change. The same place of listening we go into when meditating or find flow in our practice.

Over the course of the year the words evolved from the curiosity of what they meant in general to what they meant to me. They began to create narratives and tell a story. They moved dynamically, grew and changed from word to phrase to sentence to paragraph to a story.

My word for 2013 was VOICE. This time last year I knew I needed to learn to articulate better with words. I knew I could say what I needed to say artistically and design wise - no problem. Make words and letters look pretty, no problem. But, I was lacking in my VOICE by articulation. So, as part of my YOUR YEAR IN A WORD for 2013 I committed to blogging everyday. It was really kind of terrifying at first. And my goal was to have 365 blog entries by the end of 2013. I started my project blogging on the 10th of Feb and posted everyday through April. And what I learned from my word was to just show up > Show Up Everyday (There is, of course, a blog entry about it) and something would unfold. And in that I started to overcome my fear of my own VOICE and I wrote some pretty good entries. I actually started to have fun with it, looked forward to it and began keeping a log of ideas I had that I wanted to write about. I stopped writing daily when I realized I was just posting to post. Once I had more of an idea about what I wanted to say I reserved writing for the clarity of my voice. The story of my word began to unfold and as it got bigger I gained more confidence.

Now, punctuation and sentence structure still remain a complete mystery to me, and I'm not declaring myself Shakespeare in any way. But I did find my VOICE. I'm not as afraid of it as I was a year ago. I have a direct relationship with that word and what it means now in a way that adds strength to my foundation.

So, this Halloween, Thursday night @ 630 we will sit still, go into the dark and start thinking about the story we want from a word for a new year…

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities, don’t compromise, and don’t waste time.

Start now.

Not 20 years from now, not two weeks from now.

Now.

- Debbie Millman

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Winter is upon us. Not just here, that sounds boring and heavy, but upon us. It's a little more poetic and gives us some time to plan.

As we move toward longer nights and shorter days we think about what it is we want to work on this winter as we move inside. We remember the back body, the past, the people and experiences that have supported and nurtured us along the way. We step onto our mats and move toward what is unfamiliar, to build a new experience. We will surprise ourselves with what we've grown come spring.

Here's to the dark, where all of us get a chance to begin again!

(We will talk more about this for the annual Your Year In A Word class on Thursday, which is actually on Halloween this year...Start thinking about your words lovely people of the future!)

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"All poets and story tellers alive today make a single brotherhood; they are engaged in a single work, picturing our human life. Whoever pictures life as he sees it, reassembles in his own way the details of existence which affect him deeply, and so creates a spiritual world of his own."-Haniel Long, Notes Toward a New Mythology

“When we can celebrate and truly own what it is that makes us different, we are able to find the source of our greatest creative power.”– Aimee Mullins